


kids are lil assholes tbh

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the beta kids have to babysit a badly behaved child</p>
            </blockquote>





	kids are lil assholes tbh

The four of you all have entirely different ideas about how this evening will turn out. You can tell just by looking at everyone’s expressions.

Jade looks determined, confident that with a backup team of three she’ll finally get her problem child to behave.

Dave looks bored, as he nearly always does; but you know him well enough that you know what he’s thinking. He’d bet just about anything that Jade is exaggerating, and he’d rather be at home.

Rose looks amused. Of course she does, she gets pleasure out of everyone else’s pain. But she also looks curious about the first child that managed to find the end of Jade’s patience.

Finally, you have mixed feelings of trepidation and anticipation. You’ve never babysat before; you’re not even entirely sure ‘babysat’ is a word. You don’t think it can be too hard though. Besides, there’s four of you and one of him. How bad can it be?

Once you reach Hive Street and turn down the third driveway on the right, you start to see just how bad it can be. The closer you get to the front door, the more you can hear voices coming from inside. One is a child screaming “no” repeatedly. The other is a man who sounds like he’s at the end of his rope, just barely managing to match the kid’s volume without shouting at him, though you can’t make out what he’s saying.

When Jade rings the doorbell, you hear rushed footsteps and a muttered “thank god.” You spare a glance at the rest of your party. Rose’s eyebrows are raised. Dave’s back is stiff.

The man you heard inside opens the door with a jerk. He tries to smile politely at you all, but he fails to erase the annoyance in his eyes. Jade greets him cheerily. She’s much better at faking smiles than anyone you know.

“Mr. Vantas, this is John, Dave, and Rose,” she says to the man, gesturing at each of you in turn. “I did tell you they’d be with me today, didn’t I?”

He seemed to take a moment to recall, but then he nodded. “Oh yes, yes you did. I’m sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Come in, come in.” He steps back from the threshold to let the four of you into the living room. It’s spacious, yet cozy. The couch and chairs look almost as comfortable as Jade had promised, and you swear you smell cinnamon. Paintings and a few personal pictures hang on the walls and rest on high surfaces where a child couldn’t reach them.

The evidence of said child spoils the scene a little though. You can still hear him in the other room, even though he’s significantly quieter now. There are toys scattered all over the rug and stacked in a playpen in the corner. DVDs are littered on the floor in front of the entertainment center, either because the kid wanted to crawl in the empty shelf or because he likes being a little shit. On the wall behind one of the armchairs, you can see a little bit of purple and green scribble. You guess the chair was strategically placed to hide most of it.

Mr. Vantas leads you into the kitchen, where you finally meet the little heathen. His hair is messy and the bib he wears is worse. He looks short to you, even for a three year old, but maybe that’s because the legs of his jeans hang past his heels. You can’t tell if they’re legitimately too long for him or if they’re just not on him all the way. He’s fidgeting so much that you don’t think it’s unreasonable for clothes to be coming off. He looks like he’s about to start screaming again and he’s trying to escape his high chair, completely disregarding the fact that he’d fall to the floor and probably die or something.

“Well kids, this is Karkat,” says the father, still trying (and still failing) to sound chipper. “Karkat, Jade’s here! She’s brought some friends too. This is Rose, John, and Dave.” He points at each of you in turn. He gets you and Dave mixed up.

The child ignores you for a few minutes, looking up at his father pitifully, as if begging the man not to leave him alone with these people. Then he starts hitting the tray on his high chair and screaming “Assholes! Assholes!”

Jade and Mr. Vantas simultaneously try to tell him not to use that word, but the kid continues screaming and hitting the plastic with his fists. You start thinking if he acts like this when his dad is here, you can’t imagine what he’s like in his absence.

It looks like you’re about to find out though. With a frustrated sigh and another strained smile, he claims that he’s in a hurry and practically runs out of the house, leaving the four of you without a clue about where to start.

“He seems a bit crabby,” Rose muses, as if that’s the bigger problem at hand.

Jade turns to her with a shrug. “He’s always like that when I get here.” She looks back at Karkat, who by then had just settled for glaring at them all when his screams were ignored. She picks up a spoon and a jar of baby food left on the table that you didn’t notice when you came in.

She starts to ask if he’s hungry, but Karkat starts screaming again by the time she can get the words out. “No! No! No!”

This is where you step in, right? You decide it must be. You poke your head around Jade’s shoulder. “Karkat, you’ve got to have your dinner,” you tell him, trying to keep your voice gentle.

His screaming only gets louder at that point. You look at Jade, who seems way too tired for only being here five minutes.

“All right, come on, we’ll let you play,” she says as she removes his bib and picks him up. He stops screaming, but as soon as he’s placed on her hip he starts fidgeting. She addresses the three of you as she tries to hold Karkat still. “We need to set up these pet gates to block him from the kitchen so we can keep an eye on him.”

Jade points at the gates; Dave jumps on the task immediately. Rose helps him figure it out. You hover uselessly at her shoulder for a moment before following Jade.

She had already set him on the floor and took a chair to watch him. You take a chair on the other side, and in a few minutes Rose and Dave take the sofa.

The next half hour or so isn’t that bad, to be honest. Occasionally someone has to drag him away from the fireplace or take his markers away or something, but you mostly just sit there and watch Karkat. You try to play with him and his cars, but he screams again; Jade tells you he hates it when people touch his toys without his permission, so it’s best not to do it unless he’s being bad.

At one point he hands a ball to Dave. He throws it over Karkat’s head into the middle of the room, thinking the kid wants to play fetch. Apparently that deeply offends him, and he starts to cry.

“Shit, dude, I’m sorry,” he says softly, his hands hovering above the kid, not really knowing what to do. Jade bites her lip, but doesn’t do anything else about Dave swearing. She seems unsure if Karkat has learned that one yet, and unsure if it even matters at this point.

Tentatively, Rose stands up and fetches his ball. She holds it out to the baby, but he ignores it. Jade tries to get Karkat’s attention too, but he keeps crying.

Finally, when he shouts “Hungry!” you realize that he’s not crying about the ball at all.

With a sigh, Jade picks him up again. You stand and follow, stepping carefully over the gate and wondering how you’re going to get him to eat.

She replaces him in his high chair and reaches for the jar of baby food again. “No!” he screams, kicking and fidgeting in the chair again. “I don’t want that!”

This time you sigh. You notice Rose looks impressed that he made a full sentence. Jade keeps trying to feed him baby food, but Dave turns away from the dining table and starts searching the fridge behind her back.

You follow him and together you go through the contents. There’s not a whole lot there that you’re sure Karkat could eat, but you do find different kinds of juice and some yogurt. Dave decides to grab a cup of strawberry banana yogurt but no juice, and you start searching for silverware.

After you grab a spoon, you find Dave pulling a bottle of Nyquil out of a cabinet that appears to be designated for medicine.

“The fuck, Dave?” You keep your voice low so the girls don’t hear you. (You don’t think they would have, since they’re too busy with Karkat, but still.)

He gives you a pointed look, and pours about half of a tablespoon of medicine into the yogurt. “Dude, no, we can’t drug the baby,” you say as Dave plucks the spoon out of your hand and stirs the medicine in.

He shrugs and doesn’t bother keeping his voice low. “It’s fine, Bro used to put Dimetapp in my aj on long car rides.”

You’re tempted to tell him that sounds like a fantastic reason not to do this, and that Dimetapp and Nyquil aren’t even the same thing, but you decide not to start an argument. Dave puts the medicine back and you both return to the girls and the kid.

“Hey, look, yogurt,” he says, holding a spoonful out to Karkat. Thankfully, the kid cooperates when Dave tries to feed it to him. The girls look relieved. They don’t seem to notice the expression on his face after he tastes it.

You tense up, expecting him not to eat another bite, but amazingly he eats half the cup before his eyelids begin to droop. He’s only got a quarter left when he looks like he’s about to fall asleep right at his chair.

Rose picks him up this time, following Jade into his room to put him to bed. You clean up all the food as Dave takes down the pet gate blocking the kitchen doorway again.

You and Dave are relaxing on the couch by the time the girls come in. Jade seems significantly more cheerful now.

“Well, we’ve got a few hours and Mr. Vantas has Netflix,” she says with a grin. You all immediately agree that’s a good idea.

As Jade sets it up, Dave declares “John doesn’t get a say in what we watch.”

“Yes I do.”

“No, he’s right, your taste sucks.”

“Hey, screw you guys,” you say, falling back into the couch.

Dave pats your knee and stands up. “Stay pressed, John. I’m thirsty.”

“How thirsty?” Rose says with a smirk.

It seems to take a moment for him to get it, but when he does he turns around with wide eyes. “Oh my god Rose, don’t make this something sexual, I just want some juice.”

You laugh along with Jade, making Rose’s smirk grow wider. As the girls start flicking through new releases and Dave goes searching for drinks and you follow him for snacks, you decide that babysitting isn’t such a bad deal if you can do it with your friends.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I'm sorry about the crab pun. I'm not sorry about the thirst pun.  
> 2\. The Dimetapp in the AJ thing is something my parents actually did to me, so there you go.


End file.
